The Bard College Conservatory of Music Presents the Bard Percussion Spring Concert on Wednesday, March 21

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.— The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents the first Bard Percussion Spring Concert, on Wednesday, March 21, at 8 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. The concert will be performed by the Conservatory’s resident student percussion ensemble and members of Sō Percussion. Admission is free and no reservations are necessary. For more information contact, the Fisher Center box office at fishercenter.bard.edu or 845-758-7900.

The program includes: Rain Tree, Toru Takemitsu; Second Construction, John Cage; Mirage pour Marimba, Yasuo Sueyoshi, with Amy Garapic, solo marimba; DNA: for percussion quartet, Joan Tower; Clapping Music, Nagoya Marimbas, and Drumming, Part I, Steve Reich. Sō Percussion, the Conservatory’s faculty percussion ensemble, will perform. The members of Sō are: Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting.

About Sō Percussion

Since 1999, Sō Percussion has been creating music that explores all the extremes of emotion and musical possibility. Excitement about composers like John Cage, Steve Reich, and Iannis Xenakis—as well as the sheer fun of playing together— inspired the members of Sō to begin performing together while students at the Yale School of Music. A blind call to David Lang, Pulitzer Prize–winning composer and cofounder of New York’s Bang on a Can, yielded the group’s first commissioned piece, the so-called laws of nature. Sō’s recording of the so-called laws of nature became the cornerstone of their self-titled debut album on Cantaloupe Music (the record label from the founders of Bang on a Can). In subsequent years, this relationship blossomed into a growing catalogue of exciting releases: Steve Reich’s masterpiece Drumming; Sō member Jason Treuting’s amid the noise; Treasure State, a collaboration with the electronic duo Matmos; and Paul Lansky’s Threads. Sō’s ongoing body of original work has resulted in exciting new projects such as the site-specific Music For Trains in southern Vermont and Imaginary City, a fully staged sonic meditation on urban soundscapes commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music for the Next Wave Festival 2009 in consortium with five other venues. Sō’s next theatrical project, where (we) live, is slated to premiere in fall 2012. 

With an audience composed of “both kinds of blue hair... elderly matron here, arty punk there” (as the Boston Globe described it), Sō Percussion makes a rare and wonderful breed of music that both compels instantly and offers rewards for engaged listening. Sō Percussion has performed their unusual and exciting music all over the United States, with concerts at the Lincoln Center Festival, Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Stanford Lively Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and many others. In addition, recent tours to the United Kingdom, Russia, Australia, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the Ukraine have brought them international acclaim. 

The mission of The Bard College Conservatory of Music is to provide the best possible preparation for a person dedicated to a life immersed in the creation and performance of music. The Conservatory features a unique double degree program in which all undergraduate Conservatory students receive a bachelor of music and a bachelor of arts in another field. In addition, the conservatory offers graduate programs in vocal arts, led by renowned soprano Dawn Upshaw, and in conducting, led by Harold Farberman, as well as a Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship, directed by Frank Corliss.

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March 5, 2012

This event was last updated on 03-05-2012

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